George Butterworth

George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC (12 July 18855 August 1916) was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E. Housman’s poems from A Shropshire Lad. He was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry during the fighting at the Battle of Pozières in the First World War, and died during the Battle of the Somme. Early years Butterworth was born in Paddington, London. Soon after his birth, his family moved to York so that his father, Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth, could take up an appointment as general manager of the North Eastern Railway, which was based there. They lived at “Riseholme,” a house on Driffield Terrace, which later became part of the Mount School. In 2016, the centenary year of Butterworth’s death on the Somme, biographer Anthony Murphy, on behalf of the York Civic Trust, unveiled a blue plaque to his memory at College House, part of the Mount School. Butterworth received his first music lessons from his mother, who was a singer, and he began composing at an early age. As a young boy, he played the organ for services in the chapel of his preparatory school, Aysgarth School. He gained a scho